


Bite My Tongue

by Maeve_of_Winter



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: First Impressions, Introspection, M/M, Meeting the Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-10-26 15:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17748611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeve_of_Winter/pseuds/Maeve_of_Winter
Summary: It wasn't that Angelo disliked the Zimmermanns. He wanted to like them. Honestly. Kent really liked them.But Angelo was never quite sure what to think of them.





	Bite My Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ratcreature](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratcreature/gifts).



> Thanks to everyone reading! If you ever want to chat, here's my [Tumblr](http://maeve-of-winter.tumblr.com/). I love discussion and hearing people's thoughts, so feel free to submit headcanons, fic ideas, or just talk about Kent!

Angelo was just finishing the third chapter of his book—an examination of World War I’s impact on Australia, a part of history that popular media rarely gave focus to—when it fully occurred to him that Kent hadn’t come to bed yet. Even though it was nearly midnight, Angelo noted as he glanced at the clock, frowning.   

He wasn’t exceptionally surprised by it. Usually after any amount of time with the Zimmermanns, Kent wanted to take some time to brood on his own.

All the more reason for Angelo to go and find him, then.

Carefully marking his place in his book with the jacket flap, Angelo tossed it aside and threw back the covers, slipping into his memory foam Adidas flip-flops before leaving the room. (Vegas was too hot for slippers and Angelo hated walking around without shoes. Kent always teased him for it.)

It didn’t take long to locate Kent. Of all the rooms in their mansion, Kent had two favorite places: their elaborate back deck, which Kent himself had commissioned and was very proud of, especially the multiple staggered levels and the pergola. Then there was also there their cozy family room that was filled with copper lantern-like lamps and squashy sofas and armchairs.  

Angelo didn’t even need to check the deck. He found Kent in the family room, sitting on one of the couches and leaning back, eyes closed and a tumbler of gin in one hand.

For a moment, Angelo just watched him, a familiar tightening in his chest. He’d witnessed Kent go through this routine before. Always after a visit with the Zimmermanns. Never any other time.

He was sick of seeing it, frankly.

Leaving his self-appointed post and walking further into the room, Angelo flopped down on the couch beside Kent, looping an arm around Kent’s shoulders and pulling him against his muscular chest. He loved to hold Kent like this, loved being able to feel the warmth of his body as it pressed flush into his own, loved being able to inhale the spicy, exotic scent of his cologne. 

“I didn’t think the visit went  _ that _ bad,” he said, keeping his tone light even as he watched Kent in concern. 

As far as jokes went, it was fairly lame, but he still managed to get a chuckle from Kent. “It wasn’t bad at all.” He reflexively leaned into Angelo, tucking his head under Angelo’s chin and pressing into his neck. “It’s just a lot. You know, seeing Bob and Alicia again.”

Angelo’s grip automatically tightened around Kent at the mention of their names, and he didn’t quite know how to respond.

He didn’t know what to think of any of the Zimmermanns. He knew Kent liked them—well, more than liked them, actually. Kent sincerely valued them. He wanted them to be a part of his life. From Kent’s point of view, they’d saved him when he’d had no one else he could rely on, when each of his own parents had abandoned him.

“They took me in and made sure I had a home. They made sure I would still be able to play hockey back I didn’t have the money to feed myself,” Kent had once told Angelo when trying to explain the importance Bob and Alicia had in his life.

But Angelo wasn’t so sure that Kent should still view Bob and Alicia with that same reverence now, when he was his own man and supporting himself, as he did back then. And it wasn’t that the Zimmermanns hadn’t given Kent enormous help back when he was still in Juniors, but it was that after the bombshell of Jack’s overdose had rocked the Zimmermann family, Kent suddenly found out that the Zimmermanns hadn’t really considered him a part of their family after all.

“They didn’t mean to cut off contact with me,” Kent had once defended them to Angelo when he was first telling him about his relationship with Bob and Alicia. He’d reunited with them shortly after he’d begun dating Angelo. “But once Jack had his . . . problems, they had to give him priority. I went first in the draft. My life was going great. They had to help their son whose life . . . wasn’t.”

Angelo supposed that much was true. The Zimmermanns’ kid had ODed and obviously had some deeper issues to go along with that. He absolutely understood that Kent obviously wasn’t going to be the focus of their lives at that particular point. And he could understand that it was immensely difficult for them to see Kent’s success when their own son had undergone a breakdown because of the pressure. But just going radio silent and ignoring Kent’s attempts to reach out to them for almost five years? Angelo couldn’t understand that at all, and it had always colored his perception of them. 

Who were Bob and Alicia? Upstanding philanthropists who took in an impoverished teenager and helped him achieve his dream? Selfish fairweather friends who immediately cut off a teenager who was emotionally dependent on them in order to protect their own?

Probably, like anyone else, Bob and Alicia were a mix of some good and some bad. But Angelo would never be completely fine with how their “bad” had impacted Kent, and he would certainly never have the respect for them that Kent did.

But he had accepted that the Zimmermanns were a part of Kent’s life, and he was willing to deal with them for Kent’s sake, if not anything else.

Lifting a hand, Angelo gently ran his fingers through Kent’s hair. “I’m sorry, Kent. I know seeing them is hard for you.”

Kent shook his head wearily. “It shouldn’t be.”

Angelo tightened his grip on Kent. “No, it can be. And that’s okay.”

For a few moments, he continued to stroke Kent’s hair as he struggled to find a way to cheer Kent up. He didn’t want to badmouth the Zimmermanns, not when their opinions meant as much as they did to Kent, but he also didn’t want to act like he thought their perspectives were more important than how Kent himself was feeling.

Bob and Alicia hadn’t even planned this visit. They were in Vegas for the wedding of one of Bob’s old friends, and Alicia had just casually texted Kent yesterday with a picture of the airport when they’d arrived. Kent, of course, had immediately offered to have them over for dinner while they were there, and then the Zimmermanns had been the ones to suggest the very next night.

As a result, Angelo had needed to reschedule his weekly squash game at the club, but he wouldn’t have minded doing that if it were just for Kent. But when he was forced to rearrange his plans because of Bob and Alicia, whom he already regarded with mixed feelings, he couldn’t help but see it as an imposition.

Finally, he managed to come up with a piece of good news—well, Kent would see it as good—about the Zimmermanns’ reactions to the house. 

“They really liked the place,” Angelo offered. “They thought it was really nice. Tasteful. And they said it had a very homey feel to it.”

None of that was strictly true. When Alicia had stepped into the foyer as Angelo ushered them inside and Kent grabbed some wine glasses from the kitchen, she’d glanced up at the vaulted beam ceiling with its wagon wheel chandelier of dangling Edison bulbs, then at the rough stone entranceway that led further into the house, and then finally, down at the cherry hardwood floor that was scattered with cabin-style rugs.

“My God,” she said, chuckling. “It’s just like our house back in Montreal.”

And Angelo, who had always been vaguely amused by but also appreciative of Kent’s weird, luxury hunting lodge style of decorating, suddenly had an odd dropping sensation in the pit of his stomach, like he’d just plunged into a freefall.

For whatever reason, he’d somehow come to believe that the preference was some kind of odd East Coast quirk, and, as a California native himself, he gently ribbed Kent about it every so often.

He’d never considered that Kent was emulating the style of Bob and Alicia’s home from back when he lived with them. He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that now that he knew, either.

“Bob, come look at this!” Alicia had called, still laughing.

“Hmm.” Bob walked inside, casting a critical eye around before going to shake Angelo’s hand. “Good to see you again. Yeah, it’s a nice place, but I don’t know if I would have gone with such a red tint for the floor. Almost makes you feel like you’re walking in lava.” 

Angelo smiled obligingly, automatically covering his spike of irritation at Bob’s unsolicited critique with polite, if bland, banter. “Well, it’s certainly warm enough out there to trick you into thinking so.”

Kent had joined them then, handing Bob and Alicia their wine, and Angelo hadn’t been able to help but notice that while Kent’s favorite room was the family room, he opted to entertain the Zimmermanns in the living room, which was far more formal.

Now, true to Angelo’s prediction, the revelation brought Kent to perk up slightly.

“They did?” he asked, leaning back so he could look at Angelo’s face directly. “Good. I’m glad that they had a nice time. We don’t get to see them often enough.”

“We don’t,” Angelo agreed. It wasn’t Kent’s fault, however. He had certainly invited Bob and Alicia out enough times, but never before had they accepted the invitation, and they’d certainly never returned it.

“Maybe we could have Jack here again when the season’s over,” Kent suggested.

_ Why would you  _ **_want_ ** _ to? _ Angelo wondered to himself. The last time they’d had Jack and his boyfriend over, Kent and Jack had ended up in an argument about  _ something _ (Angelo still wasn’t clear on what) the resulted in Jack storming off in a huff with his boyfriend in tow and going to stay in a hotel instead. Since then, Kent and Jack had patched things up, but Angelo still remained unclear about what precisely Kent got out of their relationship.

Oh, sure, he knew Jack and Kent used to date and then had an incredibly rough breakup. Kent had told him as much. Angelo had actually first met him in a Vegas bar the night after the latest time Kent had gone to Jack’s school to try to make things right between them. Angelo had been concluding a night out on the town with a quiet drink after being sent out to Vegas by his firm for a conference, and Kent had been at the bar to wallow. But he’d bumped into Angelo on his way back to his table, causing him to spill his drink, and then immediately apologized and offered to buy him a new one. Angelo had accepted with the caveat that Kent had to join him. They’d been seeing each other ever since.

And Jack had told him about the two of them previously dating, too. Or rather, Jack hadn’t told him that he and Kent used to date. He’d told Angelo, completely out of the blue, completely apropos of nothing, that he and Kent used to have sex, and according to Jack, no emotions were involved.

“You know that I was with Kent for awhile, right? But just so you understand, it was just physical. Sex only. No feelings,” Jack told him conversationally, as if it were a natural turn in their enthusiastic conversation about the different Civil War battlefields they’d visited. As if it weren’t a totally random, extremely awkward thing to say to your ex’s current partner.

“I mean, there really wasn’t a point in getting all wrapped up in each other,” Jack continued with a shrug, not appearing to notice that Angelo was gaping at him. “We were always going to go our separate ways in the draft. Not a whole lotta room for sentiment there, and any of that Hallmark crap would have just made things unnecessarily complicated. Hey, you ever been down to Manassas?”

And it was because of that particular encounter that out of all the Zimmermanns, Jack left Angelo the most confused by his behavior. Angelo didn’t like him or dislike him. He was just  _ utterly baffled _ by him.

But he wanted to give Kent an answer, and he wanted to give him something positive, so he found himself agreeing.

“Yeah, his boyfriend is graduating from college this year, isn’t he?” Angelo recalled. “It might be fun for him to come out here with Jack and celebrate. As long it doesn’t interfere with his plans—I bet he’ll have a bunch of job interviews lined up or be starting some kind of internship.” 

Kent frowned briefly but then shrugged. “I don’t know what Eric’s plans are. But Jack would know, so I’ll check in with him.”

Angelo found himself doubting if Jack actually  _ would _ know; with tonight’s discovery that Kent had fashioned his house to resemble the Zimmermanns’ Montreal home, he now was left wondering about Jack’s powers of observation. Jack had been a guest of theirs numerous times before and had never once remarked on their decor, as if it were the most natural thing in the world that the house Kent owned as man in his mid-twenties was decorated to replicate the house that he and Jack had shared as eighteen-year-olds.

Maybe Jack had noticed but decided not to mention it out of thoughtfulness. But that conversation with him about how his relationship with Kent had been “sex only” suggested to Angelo that tact was perhaps not his strongest quality.

Well, whatever Jack did or didn’t notice, it wasn’t his problem right now. Angelo was tired physically and tired of seeing Kent mope, and he wanted for both of them to go to bed.

Gently tugging on Kent’s arm, he stood, pulling Kent up with him. “C’mon, let’s go upstairs. There’s nothing for us to do down here.”

Kent gave him a lopsided smile. “You’re right.” He let out a self-conscious chuckle. “Thanks for putting up with me when I get into these moods.”

“Happy to do it,” Angelo reassured him, leaning down and giving Kent a peck on the cheek before leading him out of the room.

Later, as Kent was in the master bathroom brushing his teeth, Angelo crept over to his sock drawer and removed the small black leather box from where it had been stashed away in a pair of novelty socks that another guy at the firm had given him for their gag-gift Christmas exchange last year. Flipping open the box’s lid, he admired the plain platinum engagement band once more, feeling his heart swell with happiness as he mentally rehearsed his proposal one more time. 

In all likelihood, Kent would want the Zimmermanns—all of them—at the wedding. And as strange as Angelo found them, he was willing to see them again as long as it made Kent happy.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone reading! If you ever want to chat, here's my [Tumblr](http://maeve-of-winter.tumblr.com/). I love discussion and hearing people's thoughts, so feel free to submit headcanons, fic ideas, or just talk about Kent!


End file.
